But the rich youth directed the flight of the wooden garuda-bird, so that it regained the place where his five companions awaited him.
“Have your affairs succeeded?” inquired they, as he descended.
“That they have abundantly,” answered the rich youth.
While he spoke, his wife had also descended out of the wooden garuda-bird, whom when his five companions saw, they were all as madly smitten in love with her as the Khan himself had been, and they all began to reason with one another about it.
But the rich youth said, “True it is to you, my dear and faithful companions, I owe it that by means of what you have done for me, I have been delivered from the power of cruel death, and still more that there has been restored to me my wife, who is yet dearer far to me. For this, my gratitude will not be withheld; but what shall all this be to me if you now talk of tearing her from mine arms again?”
Upon which the accountant’s son stood forward and said, “It is to me thou owest all. What could these have done for thee without the aid of my reckoning? They wandered hither and thither and found not the place of thy burial, until I had reckoned the thing, and told them whither to go. To me thou owest thy salvation, so give me thy wife for my guerdon.”
But the smith’s son stood forward and said, “It is to me thou owest all. What could all these have done for thee without the aid of mine arm? It was very well that they should come and find the spot where thou wert held bound by the rock; but all they could do was to stand gazing at it. Only the might of my arm shattered it. It is to me thou owest all, so give me thy wife for my guerdon.”
Then the doctor’s son stood forward and said, “It is to me thou owest all. What could all these have done without the aid of my knowledge? It was well that they should find thee, and deliver thee from under the rock; but what would it have availed had not my potion restored thee to life? It is to me thou owest all, so give me thy wife for my guerdon.”
“Nay!” interposed the wood-carver’s son, “nay, but it is to my craft thou owest all. The woman had never been rescued from the power of the Khan but by means of my wooden garuda-bird. Behold, are we six unarmed men able to have laid siege to the Khan’s palace? And as no man is suffered to pass within its portal, never had she been reached, but by means of my bird. So it is I clearly who have most claim to her.”
“Not so!” cried the painter’s son. “It is to my art the whole is due. What would the garuda-bird have availed had I not painted it divinely? Unless adorned by my art never had the Khan sent his most beautiful wife to offer it food. To me is due the deliverance, and to me the prize, therefore.”